If it were not for the Irish pony racing circuit it is possible that Dylan Browne McMonagle would not be gracing the world's racecourses and neither would Paul Townend and a hundred other jockeys past and present. So it is surprising to learn that Horse Racing Ireland are proving miserly at a time when pony racing is in crisis. Horse Racing Ireland receive 79-million euros from the state, yet they refuse to allocate 150,000 of those euros to ensure the continuence of pony racing. Horse Racing Ireland excuse for not digging deep to keep pony racing alive and well is that it pony racing has no central governing body and in having four regional committees somehow leaves the sport open to corruption, as if the top brass fear unscrupulous members of these four committees, all of whom are volunteers, might be potential embezzlers. At present, pony racing is kept alive by...

The debate is now moot. No longer can anyone suggest that Bow Echo is the next Frankel. The best horse in training, certainly the best 3-year-old, has proven unsound and due to injury he is to be retired. 6-races, 6-wins. The sad aspect of his retirement is that we will never really know how good he could have been. Alas, down the years, it has proved the same with many potentially brilliant flat horses, one injury and retired to the stallion shed to protect their value as stallions. Of course, as it is with colts retired prematurely from the racecourse, we are not given any specifics when it comes to the injury to Bow Echo, though we may speculate it is a tendon injury. He could, no doubt, be returned to active service if it were not for the mega-money he can now earn his connections as he transitions into a...

 I watched again the Sussex Stakes. In my mind, I remembered a different race than the one I watched on replay. In my mind, Bow Echo was an easy winner, his turn of foot devouring the opposition with the ease of Homer Simpson eating free food. Yet a second look determined a change of mind. On reflection, though the class shone through in the final strides, Bow Echo had to strain every sinew (once more) to get to and then defeat Gstaad. The thing that slightly annoys, is people better educated in the history and nuances of our sport are portraying Bow Echo as the inheritor of Frankel's crown as the king of kings. For information purposes only, I rate Brigadier Gerard slightly in front of Frankel. But that is another discussion. In fact, I came away from that second look at the Sussex Stakes with the notion that Bow Echo...

There was another example at Chepstow yesterday of a jockey dropping his whip and yet still able to win the race. Finley Marsh is the latest jockey to provide evidence for my theory that horses do not need to be whipped as encouragement to strain every sinew. Redhot Whisper won by a short-head, so every sinew had need of being strained. I am not always right in my opinion but on this subject time will prove me right. Dan Skelton's reputation as a man capable of thinking outside of the box has landed him the prize or poison chalice of becoming the latest trainer of Il Est Francais. Richard and Lizzie Kelvin Hughes are not giving up on their wayward star, a direction they had every right to go in due to the lacklustre performances of their ex-French one-time superstar over the last two seasons. He is not the first chaser...

I thoroughly enjoyed the Shergar Cup. I might even have fallen back in love with it . And there certainly was no need for Oli Bell and Kevin Blake to waste air-space defending the event or even belittling it as harmless and a novelty. To start with, five of the six races had ten-runners and due to a late non-runner (why no reserves?) nine in the other race. There have been plenty of meetings during the summer less competitive and with fewer declarations. Anyway, the public gives it endorsement year after year, so who gives a single hoot what the Bells and Blakes of this world have to say. In its 26-years, Ryan Moore has only honoured the Shergar Cup with his presence twice, 20-years apart. Both times he was leading rider and was a member of the winning team. Unlike the other four jockeys who won at Ascot yesterday, he...

Mr. Strong of Andover, in a letter published in today's Racing Post, makes a similar point to what I have been saying for many years, that for our sport to go forward we need to look to the past. Any idiot, including this idiot, realises that we cannot a regular source of competitive racing when the number of racehorses in training is going down while at the same time fixtures are not being cut accordingly.  I have argued recently that if racecourses will not commit to fewer fixtures during these troubled times, the easiest option for the B.H.A., if they have the power to enforce such a proposal, which I doubt, is to return to the days when the majority of meetings were composed of 6-races. Such a measure would cut the number of races per season without the necessity of cutting the number of race-meetings and would improve competitiveness on...

Jockeys receiving bans for interference has risen 36% in the past year. This may be due to greater vigilance by raceday stewards; it may be due to jockeys adopting 'the professional foul' as a method for gaining the upper hand during a race. To my way of thinking, as much as I would like the number of strikes with the whip reduced to one, interference is a far greater crime than overuse of the whip in that interference, moving off a straight line or going for a gap that is not truly a gap, can result in incidents where the lives of fellow jockeys and the horses they ride is put in jeopardy. With the whips presently used by jockeys, overuse, striking a horse beyond the six-strike rule, only looks bad, while being pointless, as Monty Roberts attested to. Jockeys found guilty of gaining an advantage by allowing their mounts drift...

Why jockeys view social media is only for them to answer. They live the hard life anyway, even if a minority of them live a financially rewarding life, so why subject themselves to the foul and inadequate views of punters talking through their empty pockets? So many jockeys have to starve themselves, or at least must keep a close eye on what they eat, in order to ride racehorses for a living. They are not restrained by the eight-hour working day, with their day starting before the cock crows, no doubt riding out two lots before breakfast, even if breakfast is no more than a slice of toast and a cup of black coffee, before a long road trip to whichever racecourse is their destination. Then the long road home, either with a winner or two in the bag or the disappointment of expectation ripped asunder by misfortune or an error...

I realise that tradition, something I defend time and time again, is a determining factor in the dates for the major festival meetings but shouldn't we, in tandem with Ireland, be putting the sport before history during these times of hard knocks? In Britain, as in deed in Ireland, this week it is a quiet period highlighed by the Shergar Cup on Saturday. As much as I used to love the Shergar Cup, even if it still pulls in one of Ascot's largest attendance outside of the Royal Meeting, it is not high on the list of the most important meetings of the year. You see, and this most likely will go down like a sack of spuds dropped on the foot of a much-loved granny by many, I cannot understand the gain in having Galway and Glorious Goodwood taking place at the same time. Surely one or the other could...

I used to look forward to the Shergar Cup meeting. It was, and no longer is, a day when the minnows could take on the world on a level playing field. That for me was the appeal of the Shergar Cup. It was a day when the under-appreciated female jockey had an opportunity to prove their abilities; to achieve, if the draw favoured them, rides from trainers who in a thousand-years would not think to employ them. Jo Mason came to the attention of William Haggas, for instance, and though she has never become a go-to jockey for him, she has ridden winners for him in the time since the Shergar Cup. But that element of the day is no more. It might be as a result of male jockeys being unhappy that females were being given opportunities denied to journeyman male jockeys, though more likely that the top female jockeys...

Let's hope that neither Oisin Murphy, the defending champion, nor Billy Loughnane, the challenger for the title, establish a long lead in the battle for the Jockeys Champion title. It becomes a bore when one man dominates, when the title is all over bar the shouting months before the last day. Not that I will ever accept the last day being Champions Day, an arbitary end that allows a jockey to have won more races between the first day of the turf at Doncaster to the last day at Doncaster and yet not be crowned champion. It is stupid, without sense, common or otherwise, and arranged simply to fit in with a day dubbed 'Champions Day', a day on which should by definition be wall to wall champions but only has two trophies presented. It is what it is, though, and it would add extra pizzazz to the meeting if both...

By winners trained, Mark Johnston is the greatest trainer of all-time. Obviously, this claim is not based on a like for like basis. Mark Johnston may have trained more individual winners than anyone else but with so many victories, I suspect, comes the title of more losers than anyone else. And at his height, Johnston had over 200-horses under his care. the great trainers of the past would have been lucky to have eighty. Yet being a title holder is not what I will remember him for; to me Mark Johnston is the man with the greatest and most erudite passion for our sport of my lifetime. If I could have chosen someone to fill the remit of Horse Racing Czar or supremo, I would have nominated Johnston in a heartbeat. You may not always agreed with him but you listened to every word. He will never be lost to our...

Paul Mulrennen did not need a whip to win the King George Qatar Stakes at Goodwood yesterday. On playback, I thought he lost the whip at around the two-furlong pole, though I may be wrong about the exact place hand and whip became disassociated. He won nonetheless, that is the point I have no problem with whips being carried. For health and safety purposes a whip is essential. By pulling it from one hand to the other a jockey can keep a horse running straight or prevent a collision with another horse or even the rails. My argument with the use of the whip is based on the three legs of the milking stool. 1) I believe we are being kinder to a horse when a whip is not used for encouragement than when it is used in earnest in a finish and it removes the justification of 'the horse comes...

Diamond Necklace has proved by winning two French classics that she is a true Group 1 filly, perhaps the best of her sex in the whole of Europe. Yet be honest, what did she beat in the Nassau Stakes yesterday? The second, a Group 1 winner in France two-seasons ago, is a good mare but not a great mare. She might need softer ground to be at her very best, though she is never going to give weight and a beating to a top-class 3-year-old, is she? Sea The Fire is a good mare but a long way short of top-class while the other two were never going to get competitive, with one looking over-tried and the second O'Brien filly not run on her merits, pacemakers never are. Although 'the lads' are famously happy to run their best horses against each other, what do you think the chances are that Constitution...

I thought Bow Echo was superb in the Sussex Stakes. As was Billy Loughnane. Good horses can pull defeat from out of the ashes and turn the day into one of unbridled joy and Bow Echo achieved that at Goodwood yesterday. I was not alone at the two-furlong pole to believe it was not going to be Loughnane's day as he seemed too far off the pace and locked-up with limited options to gain his freedom. Even a coming together with Zavateri did not blind his focus and without too much arm-swinging from his jockey, Bow Echo buckled down to the job in hand and once again showed Gstaad who was the boss of the 8-furlong division. A lovely watch. Of course, racing and breeding journalists are already writing about where Bow Echo will stand as a stallion, even though George Boughey has talked about the horse staying in training as...

Firstly, if I inadvertantly added an extra n to Scandanavia's name yesterday, I will accept any punishment that Judge Jennnings may meter out without comment. I also want it to be known that I bravely write this slog-a-blog without the safety-net of Grammarly or any similar aid. I am also old and without a fully-functioning brain. Not that I wish Judge Jennings to take that into account when passing judgement on me. (As if he even knows I exist) I hope Rossa knows I exist, as I will have my fingers crossed for him tomorrow as he appeals against the draconian sentence passed on him by the Sandown stewards last Friday. Didn't Amiloc behave extraordinarily well yesterday. Did you notice the professional way he hit apex of both the left hand bend and the right, saving himself so much ground he ended up challenging for the lead. And didn't he put...

When Lord Allen was appointed chair of the B.H.A., I was appalled. His insistence of an independent board won me over, though. But he was still the wrong man for the job, as events were to prove. I said that racing needed a man at the top who had experience, long experience, at the cliff-face of the sport and finally we have that man, finally we have a Chair that cares about the sport. The good news is that Simon Cox does not view his new post as a part-time job. In today's Racing Post, in an article by the Industry Editor, Bill Barber, Cox commited himself to working flat out to resolve the problems that threaten to derail the sport. And I believe him. He has resigned from all the other racing committees he is involved with, including the Thoroughbred Breeders Association and the B.H.A. Jumps Pattern Committee, and has...

With the start of Glorious Goodwood only a day away, you might be surprised to discover that the first overseas winner of a race on these shores was achieved in 1850 when the German-trained Turnus won both the Stewards and Chesterfield Cups. Not on the same day, though those short of achievements were not exactly uncommon back in the 1800's, but in the same week. Three-years later, France won its first race on British soil when Jouvance won the Goodwood Cup. I would imagine it is not a coincedence that both these successful forays into racing history occured at Goodwood as in 1850 and 1853 there was no such conveyance as a horsebox to transport horses from port to racecourse and Goodwood must be a comparatively short walk once leaving the ship. The Americans arrived on our racecourses some thirty-years later, with Iroquois winning the Epsom Derby in 1881, though his...

Eight-races at Ascot yesterday, four of which went to female jockeys, though one female in particular greedily took home three of those winners. I doubt if while watching Touleen yesterday that Saffie Osborne gloated in her abject defeat, at least not nearly as much as I did. Touleen's defeat at Royal Ascot had more bad luck than poor riding involved in the eventually result. At the royal meeting, the filly was baulked at least three-times and though no one could say she would  have won without the interference, she would certainly have finished closer. Every jockey, every day, can find themselves in a poor position in a race through no real fault of their own and the criticism thrown at Saffie was uncalled-for. Owen Burrows should have shown some loyalty, as should the owner. Is anyone criticising William Buick for not be able to grab hold of the filly to get...

In The Racing Post today there is a photograph of the finish of last year's Japan Cup. It is an innocent enough depiction of a tight finish between two brave horses and two determined jockeys. To an outsider, though, not necessarily an opponent of our sport, it represents a very bad look. I know, as you know, that the Pro-Cush whip used by modern-day jockeys is soft and should not leave a mark on the hide of a horse. The horse is not being beaten as punishment but encouraged to maintain its speed and when a horse cannot improve its position or is out-of-contention, a jockey is expected to continue only using hands and heels. The welfare of the horse comes first, after all. All the same, photographs like the one published today represent a bad look for the sport. If a human being was photographed arm-raised, whip in hand, with...